Gambit by David Hagberg (fantasy novels to read txt) 📕

the first time they’d talked. She was ultrarich and accustomed to getting exactly what she wanted, when she wanted it. He knew the type. But he also expected that she was just an intermediary like him.

“I’ll play it closer to the scenario that you ordered the next time,” he said.

“Yes, you will,” she said, and she rang off.

Bell sat back and considered if he should turn on his monitor to see if the police had arrived on scene yet, but he decided against it.

McGarvey had looked through the unconscious man’s pockets, finding only a hundred dollars in American bills, a wallet with a New York driver’s license in the name of Leonard Sampson, and nothing else.

Inside the apartment, he was examining the piece of clear plastic covering the opening in the window when the four men got out of the van.

“Incoming,” Pete called from the corridor.

He went to the doorway. “Housekeeping?” he called down as the four started up.

“Blakely and my crew, Mr. Director,” a man replied.

“Come.”

Pete holstered her pistol as Blakely appeared.

McGarvey remembered him. “Bill, you guys got the jump on this situation.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Rencke gave us the heads-up, told us what to expect.” Blakely bent over the body and placed two fingers on the right-side carotid artery for a couple of moments, then spoke into a lapel mic. “Unit one. Need an ambulance stat, this location.”

“I thought he was dead,” McGarvey said.

Blakely looked up. “Almost, but not quite. I think you’ll have a couple of questions for him if we can bring him around.”

The other three came up the stairs and assessed the situation.

“Is there anything else, Mr. Director?” Blakely asked.

“No.”

“Then we’ll get to it. Have this place right as rain in thirty minutes. Easier that no one was in the building.”

McGarvey and Pete went across the street to their apartment, and as she got a couple of beers from the fridge, Mac stood at the windows, staring across at the other building.

He had no idea why he had expected someone was coming after him, but now that the man had been taken out, he felt no relief. In fact, he was beginning to get the notion that today had been just the opening move.

“Penny,” Pete said, bringing his beer.

“It’s not over.”

“He’s dead, or damned near. It’s over.”

“Just the start.”

“Okay, you have my attention, Mac. What’s eating you?”

“Otto’s darlings have come up with nothing, yet here the bastard was. He knew where we lived, he knew we were out of town and when we were coming back.”

“That’s a stretch.”

“He wasn’t camped out. No food in the fridge. No dirty dishes. The bed hadn’t been slept in. Towels in the bathroom clean, none in the hamper. He got there this morning and waited for me to show up. He had eyes on our place.”

“One of the rooftop surveillance cameras. His, or an assistant’s?”

“I got his iPhone. Otto will probably find at least some of the answers.”

“But?” Pete asked.

“Takes money. If he turns out to be the South African contractor Otto thinks he is, whoever hired him has deep pockets.”

“So who hired him? The Russians?”

“Right now, I’m more interested in the why,” McGarvey said.

Otto plugged Slatkin’s iPhone into his laptop. It had shut down automatically at some point, but one of his programs got past that switch and into the phone’s memory.

“We’re in,” he said when the phone’s screen died. “Shit.”

“What?” Mary asked at his side.

A couple of line fragments, bits of code, appeared briefly on the laptop and then disappeared. Otto sat back and after a moment looked up at his wife-to-be. “The damned thing’s been erased. And it wasn’t a civilian program.”

“No,” Mary said. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean this was a government assassination operation.”

“What then?” Pete asked.

“Either someone with connections or with a lot of money,” McGarvey said. They were gathered back in McLean at Otto’s safe house.

“Or both,” Mary said.

“Lou, let’s start a search following the parameters just now discussed.”

“The obvious start point would be the SVR or GRU,” Lou’s AI voice said out of thin air just across the counter from them.

Mary started to say something, but McGarvey interrupted.

“Maybe not the Russians,” he said.

Everyone turned to him. “Who, then?” Mary asked.

“The Pentagon first, and then the White House.”

SEVEN

Slatkin had been taken to All Saints, the small, state-of-the-art-equipped private hospital that catered exclusively to wounded intelligence agents and in some cases high-value individuals.

It was two in the morning when Dr. Alan Franklin, the chief medico for the three-story unit located in Georgetown just a few blocks from the McGarveys’ apartment, came out of the newly remodeled operating room on the third floor and down the hall to the waiting room where Mac and Pete were waiting.

“He needs a new kidney and liver.”

“How long does he have without?” McGarvey asked.

“I’ve stopped the bleeding, but I’d give him only hours, unless you tell me you need more time.”

“Is he awake?”

“Quite frankly, he’ll probably die before the anesthetic fully wears off.”

“Can you give him something?”

“For the pain?” Franklin asked. “He’s not feeling anything.”

“I meant to wake him up. He came here to assassinate me. I want to know who hired him and why.”

Franklin looked away. “When I raised my hand and recited the oath, it was to save lives, not take them.”

“Mine was the same,” McGarvey said. “Only it was to protect innocent lives, American lives.”

“Yes, I know. But that very often has entailed taking lives,” Franklin said. He nodded toward the doors to the operating room down the hall. “Like that poor bastard’s, who I could save given the go-ahead.”

“Then what?” Pete asked, a bleak note in her eyes and voice.

“Put him and whoever hired him on trial for attempted murder. It’s the way we’re supposed to do things in this country.”

“He wasn’t going to give Mac a trial.”

“I’m not an idiot. I know how things work. And I’ve patched up your husband more than once.”

“And me,” Pete said. “But what if it was the Russian government who hired him?”

“Then we turn